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Reddit mods are creepy ideologues

I avoid using reddit, mostly because it has a bad layout, a bad userbase, and bad mods (the cyberpunk subreddit is cool though). Today, upon hearing about the recent New Year’s mass sexual assault and other lawbreaking by migrants in Germany. I decided to wander over to the news subreddits to see if the mods were squelching facts that they didn’t like. It turns out that they were, and my bias was confirmed.

Major subreddits were deleting all reports of the sex attacks. Despite it occurring to perhaps thousands of people in the major cities of Hamburg, Cologne and Stuttgart, mods on /r/new and /r/worldnews all said that it wasn’t allowed, using obviously bullshit excuses like “Wrong subreddit” or “local crime story.” Both of these subreddits regularly break 10,000 users reading at any given time.

Their narrative broke down it was clear that the incidents were so bad that Angela Merkel publicly condemned them. So I notify the mods that the Chancellor of Germany commented on this crisis that other officials had already called “unprecedented.” This forced them to allow one heavily-buried thread in the subreddit after about 24 hours of total censorship.

Wait, commentary from a head of state is required for such a submission? I immediately know that’s bullshit from links that other “local crime” stories (that coincidentally painted migrants in a positive light) compiled by a user in another thread, and so I send them this message containing these links to point out how the argument clearly doesn’t hold up. Posted in text form so the links can be clicked:

It’s obvious that you don’t like the political implications, since these stories were not removed.

Update 2: I was suspended from Reddit by the employees of the site (administrators) for what they call “vote manipulation.” I am guessing because I upvoted all the links concerning mod censorship and links to this blog post, but the actual motivation for the suspension is pretty obvious.This makes me think that the site’s top brass are indeed the ones who are supporting censorship, not just mods, who are power users.

@Robert
Considering they’re imposing their will in an obvious fashion on giant default subs, it’s pretty much impossible that the admins are not aware and either being complacent or directly handing down orders.

@No
Well a hands-off approach is different from culpability. Admins actually wanting it this way rather than not giving a shit is a different ballgame. The fact that ideological fanatics wormed their way into the modship isn’t really surprising, but admins being in on the whole thing is.

The mainstream media rightly gets criticized for enacting a gateway through which anti-narrative events can’t pass. The Internet offers a chance to get around that, but it turns out there are loads of useful idiots who will voluntarily set up the same filters.

It should be remembered that similar narrative driven moderation on redditplayed a large part in sparking off 2014’s Gamergate scandal. Given enough time, it would not surprise me to see reddit moderators being the cause of an even larger flame war in the future.

The weirdest thing about Reddit blacking this out is that it’s still apparently seen as a right-wing echo chamber on the left-wing internet. Though didn’t they recently come under new management that was much harder about cracking down on far-right subreddits?

When I lurk on Reddit it’s pretty clear the consensus varies a lot depending on the individual subreddit, but the site’s entire design and software – esp. the upvote/downvote system – is almost optmiized for the creation of echo chambers.

Then there’s how despite Tumblr’s reputation as a progressive echo chamber, *that* site actually has a quite sizeable far-right contingent. (who all are head over heels in love with Taylor Swift believe it or not!)

You got off light with only a 3 day suspension. My account was permanently suspended for the same reason – vote manipulation.

None of the admins will answer what it was they think I did, so I can only go on the assumption it was upvoting on one of the threads that the /r/worldnews mods eventually removed – since that was the last thing I had upvoted before the suspension.

Reddit is pure cancer.. cancerous moderators backed up with cancerous admins who continue to turn a blind eye to the pedophilia, incest and bestiality subreddits that seem to flourish on that site, not to mention subs like shitredditsays, topmindsofreddit, and subredditdrama which point to people who end up getting harassed, made fun of, and bullied for having an “incorrect” opinion on something.

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